There has been well known a magnetic tape winding apparatus for winding magnetic tape into a cassette case having leader tapes provided in advance. It is constructed so that the leader tape is drawn, held, and cut outside of the cassette case, one of the cut leader tapes is stuck to a magnetic tape supplied from a supply reel having a long magnetic tape wound therein. The reel in the cassette case is revolved to wind in the magnetic tape. After this the magnetic tape is cut and the magnetic tape on the cassette case side is stuck to the other cut leader tape held in place, and the magnetic tape and attached leader tape outside of the cassette case are wound into it.
However, recently developed cassette cases are small in size, and the leader tape is too short. This leads not only to complicated mechanism for sticking the end of the withdrawn leader tape to the magnetic tape outside of the cassette case before winding the magnetic tape in, but also makes adjustment and maintenance difficult. To solve such difficulties, Japanese Patent application Hei 2-22835 disclosed an improved magnetic tape winding apparatus. In this improved apparatus, the leader tape is drawn out and cut. A block holding one end of the cut leader tapes is revolved and moved to locate it. The leader tape is stuck to the end of magnetic tape at the located position of development. At the end of winding, a preparatory sticking is made by sticking half of a piece of adhering tape to the cut end of the magnetic tape on the cassette case side at the located position. The holding block is then returned to the original position. The other cut leader tape end and the magnetic tape having half of a piece of adhering tape stuck to it are stuck together by pressing the remaining half of the side of adhering tape to the cut end of the leader tape with the use of a roller.
However, the conventional mechanism for locating the holding block has the disadvantage of production time for one volume, that is, the cycle time cannot be made shorter as the first sticking and the next preparatory sticking are made at the same position located.
To make the cycle time shorter is a very important problem for manufacturers who have to complete the magnetic tape cassettes quickly for mass production.
In view of the foregoing, it is a general object of the present invention to provide a magnetic tape winding apparatus that can make the cycle time shorter even when the magnetic tape is wound into a cassette case having short leader tape.